Ed 3 It's Christmas




There’s no doubting this time of year is shopping-centric. My problem is I can’t be in a shop/store for more than one and a half hours before I can feel my spirit leaving my body, the defences fall, and the black dog gets his opportunity. Dearly Beloved is well aware of this, and went to perform the ‘big shop’ leaving me in the car-park, stereo kicking out tunes. I watched the punters coming and going. All of them looked haunted, harrowed, harassed, pressurised. There were no smiles, no signs of happiness.

It got me thinking: Christmas used to be about the birth of Christianity, even though large chunks of it are purely pagan (e.g. trees brought into the dwelling, gifts/offerings, the winter solstice, magic i.e. Santa/elves/flying reindeer, and so on). It’s not like that now, the dark forces have won this day: avarice and greed, marshalled and directed by the high street corporates; Mammon once more looking for profits. It doesn’t seem as bad across the big pond, but then Christmas isn’t the big  winter festival over there, that’s Thanksgiving, although hugely divorced from the pilgrims originally giving thanks for surviving another year in the New World, despite the odds against it. My sentiment is all the same: its all been over-run by corporate interest rather than humanitarian.

Question: do the native Americans observe Thanksgiving? I suppose that’s another question entirely, but I suspect the debate will always be subdued as long as there is a profit to be made; that’s one thing they surpass us at.

It’s all very disturbing, but at least I can go fishing, turning my back on all of the demands as soon as I can slip away, to find some ‘me’ time, therapy for the soul, a spiritual connection to the natural world, all-consuming and a palpable pleasure. I just have to fit it in amongst this seasonal madness and the demands of family life.

Happy Christmas; let’s hope 2020 is better.

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